"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

May 15, 2012

With my 18th century interests and Connecticut residence, a tag line like "Still Revolutionary" certainly ought to appeal to me, but I am not the target audience of Connecticut's newly minted $27 million promotional campaign. Watch the initial video and then we'll read the tea leaves together.

So, does this speak to you? Does it reach out to your heart and disposable income and say come to Connecticut? Whose vision is this?

Well, it is Governor Malloy's, certainly, and the professional consulting firm hired to promote our state. It seems to be directed toward at affluent professionals, vacationing families with children, cultural and heritage tourism, and particularly at successful African Americans. I'll return to this last demographic shortly, and consider the curious choice to emphasize a storyline connecting an African American man to his Connecticut roots and an ancestor who served during the Revolution, rather than hitching a ride on the Civil War Sesquicentennial which is totally absent from this video.

Actually, there is a great deal that is not emphasized in this two minute and seven second-long "Connecticut: Still Revolutionary " brand launch. Western Connecticut is missing, for one thing, with its world class trout streams and outstanding outdoor recreation opportunities including national treasures like the Appalachian Trail. Aside from someone falling backward off a bridge on a zip wire in slow motion - overwhelmingly the preferred camera speed for this promotion - the only way people in this ad seem to enjoy the outdoors is from their vehicles.

Classic New England fall foliage and white steepled village greens just didn't make the cut. One would not get the impression from this video that Connecticut has any farms at all, except for wineries. So much for Agra-tourism. So much for bucolic landscapes and covered bridges. There is plenty in the video about the Connecticut River Valley and the Southeastern part of the state. We have Mystic Seaport and Aquarium and the two big casinos on full view. It was nice to see the Essex Steam Train and Hartford Symphony featured, but this still leaves a great deal of the state and what it has to offer out of view.

The "Still Revolutionary" motto implies that The Land of Steady Habits is full of disruptive technology, a place where invention and independence are both highly valued. So where are the heirs to Samuel Colt, or P.T. Barnum, or David Bushnell (who was both a Revolutionary and an inventor)? Making wine, or making bets at Foxwoods, maybe, but they are not in evidence in this initial promotion. And why is that nice white couple that shows up in their car at 1:32 seconds into the video using a paper map to "follow the sky" like it says in the promotional song? Don't they have GPS?

If the creators of this campaign really wanted to make a strong connection between our state's Revolutionary past and our innovative present, all it required was a shot of the full-scale replica of Bushnell's American Turtle submarine at the Connecticut River Museum fading into a shot of a sub from General Dynamics putting out to sea. Stick Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park in the sequence and the African American man in the video could make a direct connection to his Revolutionary forebears by viewing its Jordan Freeman plaque commemorating the heroics of one of its black patriot defenders. It just feels like another missed opportunity.

Let's examine the story arc of the African American couple in the video who come to Connecticut. Their inspiration is apparently the discovery of an image in a book of a black soldier of the Revolution, with the inference that he is an ancestor. Given the popularity of genealogy programs like Henry Louis Gates' "Finding Your Roots", this is a pretty good hook. You can clearly see the soldier's cocked hat and hunting frock (and anachronistic mustache, too), though it is not clear whether the illustration is meant to be a photograph or a black and white reproduction of a painted or engraved portrait. Given that daguerreotypes were not available before 1839, one hopes it is not the former. Again, going with a contemporary photograph of a black soldier from the Civil War would have made the connection so much easier, but then there would be nothing in the film that directly references the American Revolution and the "Still Revolutionary" tag line.

The story continues as the couple get on their motorcycle (visually relaxing as they enjoy the freedom of Connecticut's roadways). Then the man dismounts, removes his helmet, and tries to orient himself. He glimpses a quiet stream. He sees the shade of his ancestor marching away through the forest (the only glimpse of outdoor recreation in the video that is truly Revolutionary). He then goes to dinner at a casino to toast his homecoming.

If he had had his moment of ancestral connection at Putnam Memorial Park, or Fort Griswold, I would have bought it. If the choice had been to highlight the service of African Americans in the Civil War and the State's considerable contributions to the cause of Abolition - after all, we have the birthplaces both of Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown right here in western CT - I would have been more satisfied. But then, it is not about me, or my interests. It is about that guy on his motorcycle and others like him and what will motivate them to come to relax and spend money in Connecticut.

I wonder whether the consultants and focus groups used for this promotion deliberately chose not to link to the Civil War for its target African American audience. Being reminded of slavery is not the same as being reminded of freedom. There were more than 300 men of color from Connecticut who fought during the Revolutionary War, the vast majority of them for long terms of service in the Continental Line. For most of the war, they were part of integrated regiments, and this is what the video shows in its brief depiction of the ancestral soldier, marching away in single file behind two fellow white soldiers. This is not part of the popular narrative of the Revolution, but neither is slavery.

The message here is; "You are successful, a self made man, and you can be proud of the part your Connecticut ancestor played in winning our freedom." It is not a Revolutionary message, though it does put people of color back into the story of our nation's founding. It does not put them in our extraordinary natural areas, but there may be a reason for that as well. I once shared a plane ride with the poet Nikky Finney, who remarked that when she was growing up in rural South Carolina, her grandparents had an intimate knowledge of their farm that stopped short at the uncultivated woods beyond their fields. Bad things could happen to you in there. There were trees with strange fruit.

I would like to think that when the African American man in the promotion gets off his motorcycle, he is struck by the stillness of the woods and the movement of the brook and something else awakens inside him when he sees the ghost of his revolutionary ancestor. A sense of belonging as well as continuity. A connection to place as well as history. An investment in what happens here going forward. That would be a great outcome, for him and for Connecticut.

August 05, 2011

Ulysses Grant, writng his memoirs in failing health with his finances ruined, recorded his feelings about his former adversaries at the time of Lee's surrender nearly two decades before:

"I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us."

Grant was framing not only the narrative of his life but also the national themes of reunion and reconciliation among former combatants in 1885 that predominated following Reconstruction.

There was, of course, a countervailing regional 'Lost Cause' narrative whose embers still glow today. and others that would not be seriously confronted at the national level until the Civil Rights era. Still, Grant gave expression to a sentiment that had great persistence in Civil War memory for more than a century: one that 20th century reunions of aged veterans who embraced their former foes on the battlefields of their youth only served to strengthen.

Today the great-great-grandsons and granddaughters of those old men, to the degree that they give any thought to the meaning of the Civil War at all, are obviously not informed by direct experience of those times, or even personal contact with those who lived and took part in the events of mid-19th century America. My grandmother told me what her mother told her, and her mother was born in 1874 and so heard it from an earlier generation. We may draw on the powerfully compelling second-hand narrative spun in Ken Burn's PBS documentary, or on agendas that have much more to do with personal politics and identity than with an informed and dispassionate understanding of Civil War history.

We are also in a different place in our national dialogue than our predecessors were even 50 years ago during the Centennial. In some cases we seem to have moved forward, as our discussion at the national level now emphasizes the importance of slavery and African American memory in our interpretation of the causation and significance of this conflict. But there is a notable backlash as well, and not only from unrepentant racists but also among those who feel that personal and collective values of Southern pride and heritage are threatened by accusations that what their ancestors did for the Confederacy was treasonous and in defense of white supremacy.

One hears the same old belief of an affirmative right to secede that Lincoln so compellingly dispelled in his his first inaugural address. Our "bonds of affection" that he urged his fellow countrymen in the South not to break in 1861 make it virtually unthinkable today that a region of the United States would be willing and able to secede from the Union today, but so does our Constitution, which replaced the Articles of Confederation in a deliberate effort to establish a national government that could withstand fragmentation by entrenched sectional interests.

Why is it so important to some of our fellow Americans to defend what their ancestors did in taking up arms in the cause of secession? Why is it so difficult to say today, as Grant did in 1885, that the valor of their Confederate ancestors is beyond dispute, while acknowledging that they did not go to war primarily because of tariffs, or the rights of States to self rule, but first and foremost to preserve and defend a way of life and personal identity sustained by the enslavement of people of color? Why are these two sentiments incompatible?

Pride and shame create a powerful dissonance that warps and distorts memory and prevents us from seeing with clear eyes. We who admire our forebears do not want to be condemned by their actions, and all of us stand on the shoulders of those who came before, no matter how firm the foundation that grounds their feet (sometimes feet of clay). Mussolini may have made the trains run on time, but only the very foolish and irresponsible would march through Little Italy on Columbus Day in black shirts waving the banner of fascism marked with "Heritage not Hate" and claiming it was about nothing but Italian Pride.

There is a difference, though, and an especially significant one, between guilt and responsibility. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it best;

"Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people. Few are guilty, but all are responsible".

We are talking about the responsibility that we the living have to the past and to society - a responsibility that understands the need for honest appraisal of historical evidence as well as causality. I am not guilty for what my ancestors did, but I have a responsibility to understand them as social actors who made choices for good or ill based on what they possessed and what they knew that have consequences extending to our time.

We can, and should appreciate the impact of slavery on the economic and social stratification of the United States throughout its history and in all regions of the country. It does not excuse the actions of those who supported Secession that northern economic interests benefited from slave labor, or that every state in the Union had slavery at the time of the Revolution. It does not make the cause of southern Independence any less about maintaining the institution of slavery that Confederate armies made use of black labor (and eventually a very very small number of blacks under arms). Washington's army at Yorktown, lest we forget, was estimated by a French observer to be fully 25% American American soldiers, not all of whom were free.

I say this in full knowledge that each of us has a core identity that places different emphasis on its various components. Those in the dominant culture, and part of the dominant narrative, may be less inclined to identify first and foremost by region, or ethnicity, or the events of 150 years ago. Those who place religion, or gender, or language, or landscape ahead of other considerations of identity may engage with that narrative quite differently.

At the time of the American Revolution, the various colonies along the eastern seaboard were so geographically and economically isolated from each other that "easterners" from New England considered Pennsylvania part of the south. A strong case could be made that the Continental army was able to draw on soldiers from these disparate regions, though they rarely served all together, because of the unique personal qualities of George Washington, and that otherwise as Ben Franklin so memorably depicted in a political cartoon from the French and Indian War, it was truly a case of "Join or Die".

The Declaration of Independence transformed the fight of the Colonies from armed resistance in defense of their rights as Englishmen to a national struggle for self-determination. The Emancipation Proclamation made the abolition of slavery a central war aim of the Union, but as Lincoln said in 1861 it was always the center of the conflict.

"One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute."

I believe we can honor our ancestors for their admirable qualities and their misdeeds, without needing them to be infallible or blameless. I believe we can look at atrocities and injustices honestly, whether perpetrated by the victors or the vanquished. I believe that we will still be rehashing the causes and justifications for our Civil War and flogging those old dead horses until and unless we put pride and shame aside, and start taking responsibility to give an honest appraisal of the evidence of history and its legacy today.

This state of affairs makes it challenging to apply an appropriate commemorative modifier to History Carnival 100. I suppose one might call it something along the lines of the "Demicentimensiversary Edition", but I'm no fan of the tendency in certain academic circles to invent needless, inelegant jargon instead of communicating in clear and lucid prose. All this manages to accomplish is to problematize structural totalities under the rubric of hegemonic hermeneutics, n'est-ce pas? Damn skippy. History Carnival 100 it is.

Here at Walking the Berkshires, we serve up history the way we like our single malt: neat, with plenty of smoke and peat and a dry lingering tail. Some light agitation helps to bring out all the subtle notes and complexity: less a kick in the jaw than warm oil on the tongue...

Excuse me a moment...Mmmm....Ahhh. Caol Ila, 12 Years Old. Right, well, why not help yourself to the beverage of your choice, and we'll get on with the show!

Alternate History: The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ignorant

I am extremely fond of counterfactual history when it is done well. So much of the actual history has to be right in order for the fabrication to hold together. There is also the possibility that 2nd order counterfactuals stemming from the first might well bring about the same historical outcome from a different direction. Sometimes, no matter where they begin, all roads must inexorably lead to Rome.

One of the first rules of counterfactual hypothesizing is to make as few changes as possible to the conditions leading up to the alternate reality. We are talking about the lack of horseshoe nails, here, not the gun that won't exist until 2419 - cool as that is - as described by the National Museum of American History Blog.

Speaking of events that may yet come to pass, the question of whether there should be a new monument to Virginia State troops at Antietam is the subject of a fascinating post at Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory. Brian Schoeneman, a candidate for elected office in the Virginia House of Delegates, gamely weighs in at several points during an extensive comment thread - every bit as interesting as the post itself - in support of his campaign pledge to make this happen.

An excellent example of alternate history done right is featured this month at Today in Alternate History, which speculates on what might have been, if only Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand had avoided assassination in 1914. Would you believe resurgent Hapsburgs, giving rise by 1930 to a "Triple Monarchy of Austria-Hungary-Slavonia, Turkey, and a docile but resource-rich Romanov Russia under the frail hemophiliac Tsar Alexander IV"?

"So did Palin share a correct and uncommonly knowledgeable interpretation of Revere’s ride? Or was she correct only in the way that a stopped clock is correct if you look at it in exactly the right way and ignore it a second later? That argument might have raged forever, but then someone came along and made it impossible to maintain that Palin enjoys a detailed, accurate understanding of the start of the Revolutionary War. That person was Sarah Palin."

"...in his Houston speech to the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan fell for one of the great hoaxes of American history, surpassed in taking people in only by H.L. Mencken`s enchanting fable about Millard Fillmore’s installing the first bathtub in the White House,” Schlesinger wrote. “The author of the less than immortal words Lincoln never said was an ex-clergyman from Erie, Pa., named William J.H. Boetcker.”

Airminded examines British media claims during WWII that RAF precision bombing in reprisal for the Blitz was morally and technically superior to indiscriminate Luftwaffe bombing, and finds them wanting:

"Nearly everything in these articles is, at best, wishful thinking. Bomber Command's aircrew may as well have shed their bombs as aimed them, for all the difference it made: as the Butt Report revealed the following year, only one in four aircraft dropping bombs over Germany did so within five miles of their target point. The intention was 'accurate bombing', but the effect was indiscriminate (when the bombs didn't fall on open countryside, that is, which most of them did)...as things were, it's just not possible that what the RAF was doing to Germany in late 1940 was more effective (in any sense) than what the Luftwaffe was doing to Britain."

Still, for my money, if your history is going to be bad, it might as well be entertaining.

"This is a history that gets overlooked or ignored because of recent debates in the West over garments-as-oppression for other women–you know, Afghani women in burkhas, or other Muslim women covered by the hijab or la voile. As though Western women’s clothing has never been an issue in their citizenship or their feminism!"

And then we have certain minted pneumismatic artifacts of scholarly interest blogged about at Hypervocal. Be forewarned that these may be considered NSFW in some quarters. Are they ancient Roman brothel tokens, or possibly pornographic gaming pieces? At right, a proposed design for a modern token, suitable for use by disgraced US Congressmen in exchange for sexting services, appropriately priced at "sex asses", if I remember my High School Latin.

(I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that certain internet search terms taken out of context from the preceding paragraph are going to single handedly make History Carnival 100 the most heavily visited edition of all time. Just imagine if I had included extended pasages from The Satyricon...)

Blinding Me With Science

It seems appropriate at this point to bring up the subject of censorship. Take, for example, the history of the active suppression of various lines of scientific inquiry. There have been a number of mutually sustaining blog discussions this month on this topic, including one at Christopher M Luna that opines;

"the tendency to label pre-nineteenth century thinkers as scientists created the “possibility of a false impression that science is somehow eternal, separate from the people who practiced it, just waiting to be revealed” and that such an impression could lead to “a problematic faith in progress, a misunderstanding of the scientific method (as though it is static or eternal), and, perhaps most popular these days, a mischaracterization of the interaction between people investigating the natural world and religion."

"The heliocentric hypothesis says that heliocentricity offers a possible model to explain the observed motion of the planets; it says nothing about the truth-value of this model. The heliocentric theory says that the universe is in reality heliocentric. In 1616 the Church banned the heliocentric theory but not the hypothesis. This might at first seem like splitting hairs but in reality it is a very important distinction."

In a similar vein, Jeannie at Tripbaseblog offers her picks for the 8 Most Inspiring American Speeches of All Time and presents their settings as potential history tourism destinations. I confess I would not have thought to include Swami Vivekananda in this lineup, but I wouldn't mind a visit to Chicago (when the Cubbies are in town).

Thomas Dixon's The History of Emotion's blog delves into emotional animals in history and offers up a 1705 account of a weeping horse in Augsberg. I'll see your horse and raise you a Beagle - Schultz's, not Darwin's.

Reading and Misreading

Sandusky Library/Follett House Museum posts at Sandusky History about The Prisoner's Farewell by Irl Hicks, a confederate POW, who upon release at war's end was selected to give a Valedictory Address to the Young Men's Christian Association of Johnson's Island Ohio.

Anchora discusses the relationship between the use of inverted commas in early modern texts as commonplace markers and Kindle's "popular highlights" feature. Here's mine from hers;

"Once you become aware of the significance of inverted commas in early modern books, though, you will never read them the same way again -- it opens up an entirely new (if, perhaps, still familiar to us) way of reading in which texts are mined for pithy, quotable passages."

Mark Liberman at Language Log takes his shots at the media bias toward "sensationalism, conflict and laziness" and offers up this post entitled "A Reading Comprehension Test". Are you smarter than the designers of this American History test for 12th graders, the educational expert who assessed its results, and the news outlets that covered those findings?

"My recent engagement with the wonderful world of blogs and Twitter has certainly shown me both more interest in and more misused history of science than I had previously come across. (I do not feel, in some cases, that misuse is too strong a word. What the Tea Party do to 18th-century American history, supporters of ID do to Darwin and both sides in the arguments about what Christianity has and has not done for science tend to do to the whole history of Western science.) "

Once again, the comment thread is as thought provoking as the post itself.

"This map is not much help in reconstructing that walk, but it does capture the elementary narrative structure of Ulysses. And it does so in that perennial favourite of schematic itineraries, Harry Beck’s London Underground map."

'A mappa mundi is a depiction of the world as a place of experiences, of human history, of notions and knowledge. It's more like an encyclopedia. It's certainly not - and was never intended to be - a chart to be followed by travellers"

"The volunteers I was working with started turning up some startling items amid the field reports and correspondence—pulp magazines from the 1930s, newspaper clippings with headlines straight out of the era of yellow journalism, and gruesome photos of dead bodies...And what a story it turns out to be! It has everything you’d expect (and wouldn’t expect!) from a Smithsonian expedition to tropical seas—exotic islands, fascinating wild fauna, stout-hearted scientists, a love triangle, and, very likely, murder.."

Looks like excellent beach reading. In other mysterious museum news, Galt Museum & Archives blog has one concerning Miss Edith Kirk, an artist "who came from an influential family in Yorkshire, travelled to remote towns in western Canada and then settled in Lethbridge. We don’t know why she left England, nor how she would find herself in the far northern reaches of British Columbia. Trying to fill in the many gaps of her life is an interesting challenge."

"By the mid-1960s Indonesia Calling had become a film that had a growing following in Holland, long before it had an audience. This made it unique in the history of the cinema. In its symbolic form it intervened in the historical process, shaping memory and providing a site for the articulation of diametrically opposing approaches to the national, and indeed international, past. The facticity of the film become tangential to it most significant impact. The film as fact had been replaced by the film as signifier."

HSP's Hidden Histories takes us out on an uplifting note with selections from a useful but often underutilized historical resource: the 1850-1880 US Mortality Schedules. Alas for the likes of poor William Shuler, age 54 , who died in June of 1869 in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Norriton Township, "while disinterring a dead body in {a} Cemetery, having a cut on his finger, had his blood poisoned, from which he died."

This concludes History Carnival 100, brought to you this month by the Roman numeral C, and respectfully submitted by your most humble and obedient servant, a sometimes Continental in the recreated 1st New Jersey Regiment who on occasion even manages to go Walking the Berkshires. The History Carnival returns in August and you could be the host! Trust me, Sharon makes it easy and it's much more fun than your viva or junior prom ever were.

The rest of you may submit nominations here or follow along on Twitter (@historycarnival). Now if you'll excuse me, I need to see a man about a ray gun. I'm leaving the Brown Bess at home for my next reenactment. Consider this my warning to the British, à la Palin's Revere; "You are not going to take our atomic pistols!"

June 26, 2011

With less furniture and overall clutter in the house after the divorce, I've had the opportunity to play with the living spaces and try out new configurations. It makes it easier to steam clean the carpet, and it also afforded the chance yesterday to dust off (quite literally) my embarrassingly extensive toy soldier collection. I had the whole thing out on the dining room floor while I shifted bookcases around, and figured this was as good a time as any to give you a good look before they go back on the shelves.

I started collecting 54mm matte finished metal toy soldiers from the American Civil War period back in the late 1990s. My historic interests and discretionary income, such as it is, are now directed elsewhere, and while there are a few things I would have liked to have added to what I have amassed, I no longer feel compelled to do so. I will never have the space to make the dioramas on the scale these deserve that I dreamed of as a boy, with my much less expensive toy soldiers, be they 1970s vintage Britains painted plastic or 15mm Airfix "model men". Heck, I am my own, life size toy soldier when I muster with the Jerseys with my Brown Bess and cocked hat.

There are half a dozen makers represented in this toy soldier army. The majority of them are from William Britian (1999-2001 and then again after the company was sold to First Gear with the current excellent line) or Conte Collectibles 2000-2004 before they became oversized and grotesque. There are a few from Old Northest Trading Company, and Troiani Historical Miniatures, both among the brilliant scultptor Ken Osen's ventures before he returned to Britains. Troiani is no longer in business, and neither is Forward March, nor is Soldier Gallery which made a few greatcoated Irishmen for Fredericksburgh, and from which an officer and drummer boy are part of my collection. There is also a union 1st sgt of cavalry and a firing line of Brooklyn chasseurs from Colletor's Showcase. and a Russian made color bearer from Kentucky's "Orphan Brigade". Lately, though, I have been strictly interested in Britains, and added a Union field hospital to the leadpile last year.

April 26, 2011

I saw Dances with Wolves during its theatrical release. I was mesmerized, but I was predisposed to be so. I have been a fan of westerns since I was weaned on recordings of The Lone Ranger, and was a Civil War buff of longstanding. I was also a fan of the anti-western, or rather, the alternative to the standard, white hatted version of western history where the story was not just the one that made it into dime novels or technicolor. When I was in 2nd grade, I started receiving volumes from Time Life books Old West series, and I knew that there was more to the frontier than cowboys and Indians. I also knew that Indians generally got short shrift in westerns.

The movie, as with any creative work, is a reflection of its own time. It feels dated now, with its sympathetic retelling from the perspective of the native people (the Lakota, anyway) and depiction of ecological devastation and culture genocide associated with European dominance of the prairie. It is not a movie that would have been made in 1970, or 2011. It is a love story, really, a yearning for something lost, or maybe to be lost ourselves in that wide open solitude of the young land before the plow.

The use of the Lakota language and the many domestic scenes in the camp of the Sioux, make the film feel more like ethnography than Hollywood. Its native American actors are far more authentic than their predecessors on the silver screen. The cinematography is gorgeous, seductive, even, for one who loves the wild, and fell in love with the idea of Native Americans back in the days when I played "pioneers and Indians" as one of them.

It is an ugly movie, also, when it shows the degradation of the despoilers of the West and the savagery of the Pawnee (humanizing the Sioux at their expense). It is unsubtle, and yet easily dismissed in our cynical age. It embarresses us, today, sticky with the political correctness of its day and its seven Academy awards. We prefer to think that Clint Eastwood reinvented and ressurected the Western genre with Unforgiven in 1992, forgetting that Wolves won Best Picture as well and two years before. Both films are about moral ambiguity, but Dances with Wolves is about choosing sides across an irreconcilable gulf between two worlds, while Unforgiven has only antiheroes and is a much bleaker vision of humanity. All that is missing is the profanity of Deadwood to bring it up to date.

Dances with Wolves is a romance on an epic scale. It is a throwback because it is a romance that wears its loyalties on its buckskinned sleeve, but a decent one, by and large. It reminds me of my years living in Africa, among those of other cultures where everything was new, for us all. I relate to that part of the movie in ways I cannot relate to the characters in Unforgiven. It is not a true picture of the West, any more than any western movie can be, but it is moving and it was groundbreaking twenty odd years ago, and an important piece of film history even if it belongs to another time.

November 22, 2010

Commentator Bryan Fischer's persistent, incendiary remarks about the feminization of the Congressional Medal of Honor are his own deliberate fabrication and not some media distortion. The backlash they have provoked is likewise his own fault. He said them without apology and for effect, and is still saying them, even as he tries to frame his message around the point that we need to honor more "take the hill" acts of bravery as well as those who place the lives of their comrades above their own.

This is disingenuous, to say the least. In his repetition of "feminization" in the title of his published remarks (now stretched out in a three part series), Fischer unashamedly values "masculine" attributes - those who "kill people and break things" - at the expense of "feminine" qualities of courage. Extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor does not make this distinction.

He says we have become squeamish about presenting the Medal of Honor to those who kill the enemy, noting there have been no "take the hill" MOH citations in either Iraq or Afghanistan (he could also have added Somalia, for the two special forces members killed in the Black Hawk Down rescue and extraction in 1993).

There have been four Medal of Honor citations for soldiers serving in Iraq and four in Afghanistan, all of them but the latest for Staff Sergeant Giunta presented posthumously. We are certainly not squeamish about recognizing those who make the supreme sacrifice defending their comrades.

This is a very small sample size from which to draw the sort of conclusion that Fischer has made regarding one kind of valor being preferentially recognized over another in contemporary Medal of Honor citations. He makes very selective and slanted use of history. From the very beginning, there have been many Medal of Honor recipients who have been recognized for saving lives, to name just a few:

[Civil War] "During the attack on Charleston, while serving on board the U.S.S. Keokuk, Q.M. Anderson was stationed at the wheel when shot penetrated the house and, with the scattering of the iron, used his own body as a shield for his commanding officer."

[Civil War] Seaman Avery and Quarter Gunner Baker "braved the enemy fire which was said by the admiral to be "one of the most galling" he had ever seen, and aided in rescuing from death 10 of the crew of the Tecumseh, eliciting the admiration of both friend and foe."

[Indian Wars] "At McClellans Creek, Tex., 8 November 1874, Captain Baldwin received his second Medal of Honor citation after he "rescued, with 2 companies, 2 white girls by a voluntary attack upon Indians whose superior numbers and strong position would have warranted delay for reinforcements, but which delay would have permitted the Indians to escape and kill their captives."

[Spanish American War] At Tayabacoa, Cuba, 30 June 1898. Private Bell, 10th U.S. Cavalry, "voluntarily went ashore in the face of the enemy and aided in the rescue of his wounded comrades; this after several previous attempts at rescue had been frustrated."

[WWI] "During an operation against enemy machinegun nests west of Varennes, Cpl. Call was in a tank with an officer when half of the turret was knocked off by a direct artillery hit. Choked by gas from the high-explosive shell, he left the tank and took cover in a shellhole 30 yards away. Seeing that the officer did not follow, and thinking that he might be alive, Cpl. Call returned to the tank under intense machinegun and shell fire and carried the officer over a mile under machinegun and sniper fire to safety."

[WWII] "For conspicuous devotion to duty, extraordinary courage, and complete disregard of his own life, above and beyond the call of duty, during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, by Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. As Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. West Virginia, after being mortally wounded, Capt. Bennion evidenced apparent concern only in fighting and saving his ship, and strongly protested against being carried from the bridge."

[WWII] "During the early part of his imprisonment at Makassar in April 1942, [Navy Lieutenant] Antrim saw a Japanese guard brutally beating a fellow prisoner of war and successfully intervened, at great risk to his own life. For his conspicuous act of valor, Antrim later received the Medal of Honor."

There are many more citations like these for recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Despite all protestations to the contrary, Fischer's irresponsible use of the term "feminization" is not just insulting to men and women; it dishonors the heroism of these servicemen.

At the heart of Fischer's words, of course, are the culture wars, and a fundamentalist nostalgia for an American values system that predates the 1960s. America today in fact does value minimizing casualties in modern wars. Iraq and Afghanistan are very different conflicts than the battlefields of Europe or the atolls of the South Pacific, where territory was conquered at a tremendous cost, as Fischer bluntly puts it, in people killed and things broken.

There were 16 million American men and women in uniform during World War II. 464 Medals of Honor were presented for actions taken during that war, 266 of them posthumously, and most, it is fair to say, for fearlessness and ferocity in combat, often when on the defensive. All were for selfless acts, and it is this quality, above all others exhibited by Medal of Honor recipients past and present, that is in keeping with the highest traditions of the service. Fischer's actions, however, belong in the ash heap of history.

September 18, 2010

I came across this painting at the old Market in Charleston, South Carolina last week, just across the way from the Confederate Museum. This probably explains the omission of various Republican Presidents who served in Union Blue (Grant, Harrison, Garfield, McKinley). It does not, however,explain the egregious relegation of Presidents Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Johnson (the other Republic who faced impeachment), Taft and Arthur. I am certain there are several worthies here who could shoot pool better than Gerry Ford.

But what I really want to know, is what Lincoln said that the rest of this anachronistic tableau thinks is so gash darned funny. By all means, provide your own caption.

September 17, 2010

Last week I was down in Charleston, South Carolina, and took full advantage of its historical, culinary, and ecological wonders. In this last category is the Angel Oak, a massive Live Oak that some estimates place at well over 1,000 years old. Located on John's Island, it is absolutely magnificent, if a bit over loved. There are vigilant monitors watching hidden cameras to keep people from sitting on its lowest branches, or poisoning it, as some pro development types have attempted.

At Magnolia Cemetery we visited the graves of H.L. Hunley and the veterans markers for all three of the drowned crews of his eponymous Civil War submarine. The last of these seamen were recovered when the H.L. Hunley was raised from the bottom a few years back. In 1864 this was the very first submarine to sink a ship in war, and the luckless Union vessel she took down with her, was the U.S.S. Housatonic.

Up the Ashley River from Charleston are the remains of old Dorcester and its colonial era fort with its tabby walls. The brick bell tower of the old church also stand nearby, and aside from all the Spanish moss and signs cautioning against swimming with alligators it has an oddly English feel.

We also made it out to Sullivan's Island and Fort Moultrie, which has been conserved with bastions reflecting its service from the early federal period through WII. before that, though, it gained fame for the Palmetto Log fort defended by Colonel Moultrie in 1776 during the first British attempt to capture Charleston.

Downtown Charleston is so picturesque, I almost forgot to take any photographs. This shot is down at the extreme southern end, with a stunning view from these houses of the Harbor and distant Fort Sumpter, which incidently my southern friend Grant says is much smaller than it looks. He used a rather colorful phrase in describing it which I shall not utter here, but it made the point rather well, I thought.

I enjoyed Benne wafers, Oysters and Shrimp and Grits. Not such a fan of boiled peanuts, but all in all a grand adventure.

June 12, 2010

Kevin Levin at Civil War Memory raises some very good questions about a reported find of a Brady studios photograph in a North Carolina attic that purportedly depicts two African American slave children. To which I will add the observation that while this certainly can be viewed as an image of the generic horror of rural poverty, it is highly unlikely that it is a Brady photograph of slave children in the American South. The foliage just doesn't ring true for the period, and certainly not for North Carolina.

Yes, we have no bananas.

Caribbean and Latin America, yes. Carolina, no. Not in the 1860s. Not with banana leaves killed by temperatures under 20 degrees. Americans imported bananas in the 1870s, but we did not grow them during the Civil War, and only much later in south Florida and southern California.

May 19, 2010

(This article first appeared in the Winter 2008-2009 issue of Massachusetts Main Streets & Back Roads.)

The Berkshire Hills and
rugged Taconics are merely roots of ancient ranges far greater in stature than
the rounded crests of today.Uplifted by
clashing continents, these mountains rose and wore away over a period of tens
of millions of years.The resulting
geological record in western New England is a
trove of folded rock and minerals transformed by tremendous heat and
pressure.Worn down to hard nubs,
cracked by ice and scoured by glaciers, our mountains are now shadows of their
former selves.

As ramparts go, these diminished ranges remain formidable
impediments, dictating the patterns of travel and settlement in the Berkshires
since the first Neolithic hunters occupied the tundra lands the ice
relinquished.The rivers of our region,
with their narrow intervals and fertile bottomland, only rarely breach the
mountain chains running north and south on either side.There are just a few gaps and saddles between
the ridges to accommodate east-west travel.Anyone who has driven the switchback of the Mohawk Trail from North Adams to Florida is keenly aware
that these mountains are still an impressive barrier.

Early travelers through the region found the going very hard
indeed between the Connecticut River and the Hudson.In 1694, it took one colonial delegation
three days to travel the “Great
Road” between Springfield, Massachusetts
and Kinderhoek, New York in a party that included 60 Connecticut dragoons and
spent nights sleeping rough in huts of pine boughs.Commissioner for Massachusetts the Reverend Benjamin
Wadsworth described the road as “very woody, rocky, mountainous, swampy;
extream (sic) bad riding it was…a hideous, howling wilderness.”This ancient path would later serve as a
military road during the French and Indian War, and witness the passage to Boston of the guns of Ticonderoga and the surrendered regiments of Burgoyne’s Saratoga army.

With our Independence
from Great Britain
came the defeat and dispossession of the Iroquois, whose influence and
proximity had served as a check on the expansion of Algonquian settlements in
the Berkshires even before the arrival of European colonists. With the fertile
western lands of the Iroquois now open, it wasn’t long before men of ambition
and ingenuity started to hatch plans to expand commerce by piercing the
mountains between New England and New York.In 1819 an idea was hatched to connect Albany and Boston by canal, and a
route for this venture was even surveyed through the northern Berkshires in the
mid-1820s before the scheme stalled on the flanks of HoosacMountain
and was abandoned for being too costly.

When railroads supplanted canals as the modern means of
transport, a northern route through the Berkshires once again was proposed as a
way of linking the mill towns of central and western Massachusetts.Climbing westward up the DeerfieldRiver
valley, the Troy & Greenfield Line would have to cut through the HoosacMountain
to reach North Adams.In 1852 an attempt to bore through the
mountain was made using the extremely expensive Wilson’s Patented Stone-Cutting
Machine, that managed to burrow a dozen feet into the rock before it seized up
for good.

Four years and millions of dollars later, the Troy &
Greenfield Line secured the service and investment
of Herman Haupt as its chief
contractor.The project was now one of
the greatest engineering efforts of its day – a tunnel four and a half miles
long through the heart of HoosacMountain - and Haupt was
one of the most brilliant engineers available.Politics and rival railroad interests, naturally, intervened, with Massachusetts ultimately
abandoning its promise to provide funding to complete the work.His reputation slandered and his fortune at
risk, Haupt was commissioned a Brigadier General in the early months of the
Civil War and put in charge of railroad development for the war effort.He was a tireless worker and his
contributions were a major factor in maintaining the military superiority of
the North, but he lost his investment in the Hoosac Tunnel project when Troy & Greenfield defaulted on
its mortgage and was taken over by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Stuart Murray, author of A
Time of War which details the history of BerkshireCounty
and its citizens
during the Civil War, describes the challenges facing our own
“Big Dig” during this period.“(I)t was
difficult to find reliable workers because so many men were away at war.Excavating the shaft, twenty feet wide and
twenty-four feet high through the mica slate of HoosacMountain,
required hundreds of laborers working long hours with hand-drill, pick and
shovel.Black powder blasted the rock
apart, but explosions left dangerous cracks and unseen weaknesses that resulted
in sudden collapses.Men died regularly
in rock falls.”On October 17, 1867, 13 workers died in
a gas explosion in the central shaft, earning it the name “the bloody pit.”

By 1868 miners were averaging 150 feet per month and rail
lines extended from Troy
and Boston to
either side of the mountain.On
Thanksgiving Day, 1873, the final feet were cleared and a bevy of dignitaries
and 500 assembled onlookers ceremoniously stepped through the 5 foot opening
between the two ends of the tunnel.The
first trains would run in early 1875, with an official opening in July, 1876
coinciding with the nation’s centennial.

Today you can stand on a ridge overlooking the Deerfield and be unaware of the marvel of engineering
beneath your feet.A few freight trains
pass through the tunnel daily, but in the Berkshire
hill towns the need for connectivity is now about high speed internet access
instead of railroads.Our mountains are
generally free from communications towers, resulting in gorgeous views as well
as fragmented cellular service of dubious reliability, much like the “Great Road” of old.